This web site doesn't display advertising. Please consider making a donation.

Tell me, Desert Draftsman

Free texts and images.

Jump to: navigation, search

← And the toothed paw of the maple Octets (IX) ~ Tell me, Desert Draftsman…
written by Osip Mandelstam 		From needle-shaped pestilential glasses →
From Moscow Notebooks. See also Poems. Translated from Russian by Dmitri Smirnov. In Russian: Скажи мне, чертежник пустыни.



IX



Tell me, Desert Draftsman,
Geometer of the quicksands,
Is it true, that unrestrained lines
Are more powerful than the blowing wind?
— I don't care about the trembling
Of his Judaic troubles. —
He shapes experience from babble,
And drinks babble from the experience.


November 1933, Moscow

© Dmitri Smirnov, translation. Can be reproduced if non-commercial.

Retrieved from "http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Tell_me%2C_Desert_Draftsman"
Personal tools